Monochrome

I have been playing around with monochrome images lately and thought it was about time I posted some of them here.

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To Touch the Clouds

Taken at Hells Mouth, Cornwall, a notorious suicide spot.

Just Like Old Times...

Seine Net Fishing at Hemmick Beach, Cornwall

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Swans, Grey Heron and Canada Goose

After a recent talk on natural history photographs at the local camera club, I felt inspired.
I headed off to Par Beach Pool (just behind Par Beach in Cornwall) to see what was there. I haven't got a telephoto lens, and there looked like there were some more interesting birds that were sadly out of my range.

Still I managed to get some half decent attempts with my Tamron zoom lens.

This is my favourite shot, a Mute Swan Cygnet. I loved the golden tones.

There were some adult mute swans too:

And a Canada Goose:

I managed to borrow a lovely telephoto lens, so I returned to the pool a couple of weeks later and had more luck I think...

(This looks much better large!)

A Wagtail:

I was also really excited about catching a Grey Heron - it was only there for the briefest of moments, so I didn't have much of a chance to zoom in or compose it more thoughtfully. It does look better in a larger format (click the photograph for a larger size)

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2008 - The Beginning...

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In the beginning there was a birthday.

Finally I had a real camera. Not the convenient shove-in-your-handbag point and shoot I had used forever, but a shiny new Canon EOS 450d, complete with an 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS kit lens, and a Tamron 70-300mm f4/5.6 DI LD Macro lens.

I had to take it out for a trial run, so headed up to Warrens wood at St Blazey to make the most of the Autumn colour scheme. I had a quick look at the manual, but with so much to take in, decided to dial it to manual and experiment with the settings in the hope that I might take a shot that I liked.

My macro lens still needed testing, and with the Autumn weather giving way to the chill of Winter, I felt some indoor practice was in order. Water seemed like a good place to start, so to the bemusement of those around me, I spent a weekend taking photographs of various combinations of water, oil and cds... as you do!

Flowers seemed like the logical progression, and since I was new to the world of macro, I headed outside to shoot the only flower still standing (in my defense - it was December by this point!)

What my back garden lacked, the supermarket provided, and I bought some flowers. I must be naive, but I didn't realise they actually dyed flowers... I thought I had bought blue flowers, but it turned out I bought white ones that someone had dyed blue.

I felt duped, but they were still pretty!

I finished the year trying to make a crap Christmas tree look better.

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